I was going to take my laptop somewhere without internet access and so I thought I’d try sticking Steam into offline mode to see if I’d be able to access my games all right. I then spent about 30 minutes figuring out why the hell all Steam would do afterwards was spit out the error: “Steam needs to be online to update, but was set to offline mode”. How the heck am I supposed to set it to online mode if it won’t freaking open? After a lot of Googling, here’s what worked for me:

This will allow you to skip step 3. I mention it because a few people have said that either the Application Support or Steam folder was still missing, so this is a way to bypass that problem and get directly into the steam folder.

3. Navigate to Users/*YourUserName*/Library/Application Support/Steam

4. Open up “registry.vdf” in TextEdit (or another similar program)

5. Search the file for “Offline” … it should be set to 1. Change it to 0! And then, of course, save the file.

Note that we are not changing the value for “OfflineAFS”, we’re changing “Offline” directly underneath it. This post on the steam forums is my source of information for this part.

6. Try starting up steam. It should hopefully work! It did for me!

Note: This was done in OS X 10.7 (Lion)… I’ve yet to test it on any other version of OS X.

Update [Dec. 25, 2012]: Apparently it also works on OS X 10.8.2. Thanks to Tamara in the comments for letting me know!

If you’d like to see a video watching me do these steps, take a look here:

You are a legend mate – this worked for me perfectly! Wooo! I can play the games I paid for again now… Disappointing that Steam never responded to my initial query.

tetchro

Awesome! I’m glad it helped!

Oslon

steam is not in my Application Support folder ??
any help ?

tetchro

Hi! Are you sure you’re in the right Application Support folder? There’s actually 2 of them on your hard drive. One is located in *HD*/Library/Application Support (there’s no steam folder in there) and the other is in *HD*/Users/*USERNAME*/Library/Application Support (which should house the steam folder).

http://www.facebook.com/joshuaneve95 Joshua Neve

I have been searching the internet all morning… THANK YOU!

Parker

I followed this but when I got to HD/Users/Username (I of course replaced with my username), there wasn’t a library folder in it.

tetchro

You can try using the ~/Library/Application Support/Steam method (instead of just ~/Library)… this should bypass the problem hopefully.

You can try a different (and probably easier) method of getting to the registry.vdf file…
In finder, go to Go > Go to Folder and type in “~/Library/Application Support/Steam” (without the quotes) and the finder window should automatically open to that directory. registry.vdf should be in there and you should be able to edit it. Hopefully that works! (I tried it on my Macbook running Lion and it worked for me)

jordan

Awesome! Thanks so much!

tetchro

Glad to help!

Steve

Thank you so much, im so happy right now!

tetchro

WITH

ty!! could u tell me where the installation of games……………..

tetchro

Where the games install? To be honest I don’t have access to a mac right now, so you might be better off with Google for that one… sorry!!

http://www.facebook.com/toby.tyddyv Toby Tyddyv

I dont have TextEdit for some reason. Please help

http://www.lagserv.net/ colbyj

Any simple text editor can work.

Jessup

Okay, I have registry.vdf but when i open it all that text isnt there. This is what is says

“Registry”

{

“HKCU”

{

“Software”

{

“Valve”

{

“Steam”

{

“Language” “english”

}

}

}

}

}

And then it ends there.

Idk how to get all the text to go in the file. could someone copy and paste all the text for me or give a me a download for the file to see if that fixes it?

http://www.lagserv.net/ colbyj

Just add a new line under the “Language” “english” line, and then copy+paste the following:
“OfflineAFS” “0″

“Offline” “0″

Hopefully that does it.

RVCA1998

THANKS MAN that fixed my problem!!!!!!!

Gageb

Can you post a picture of how it should look?

secret :P

For me it doesn’t work

ugur

you are great! thanks its worked!

Tamara

Works for 10.8.2 too, thank you so much!

tetchro

Awesome! Thanks for letting me know I updated the post.

Jeffrey Hurley

It worked for me, except now it says: Steam needs to be online to update. Please confirm your network connection and try again.

tetchro

Ummm that’s a new one. I did a quick google and found this post on the steam forums

this worked, and you’re incredible! i’ve been trying to get steam to work for months

cain

wont open registry.vdf says i have no application to open it. any pointers?

tetchro

Really? That’s a new one… do you actually have a program installed that should open it? Like textedit? If not, try doing a quick google search and downloading one. But if you DO have textedit or something installed… well… that’s just weird. I’m not what to recommend then, to be honest.